From small firm, big savings on electric bills

ETS helps landlords lower their electric bills.

A company that promises New York residential landlords significantly lower electric bills is catching on. Less than two months ago, ETS signed up one of its newest clients, the 418-unit Riverbank West apartment complex in midtown. There, the New Jersey-based outfit will install hundreds of sensors that can keep careful, minute-by-minute, room-by-room tabs on the building's power usage, which could allow landlord Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors to slash bills by as much as 30% by both changing its habits and buying electricity when it's cheapest.

So far, said ETS Chief Executive Jeff Hendler, that promise has been enough to lure the landlords of 3 million square feet in the area. That includes 500,000 square feet in buildings belonging to Manhattan's Milstein family, part owner of ETS.

"When a lot of building systems were built more than a decade ago," he explained, "there wasn't Wi-Fi, there wasn't an iPhone—you didn't have these types of sensors and connectivity in real time."

Careful monitoring of all building systems has long been used in the commercial sector to cut utilities costs, noted Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council. Recently, the developers of Hudson Yards took it a step further, announcing a similar monitoring system they dubbed a "quantified community." But that level of data has not been collected in the multifamily realm, according to Mr. Unger, and it could be costing landlords dearly. "If you're not monitoring what is going on, you can't find out what you need to address," he said.